Imagine an island of flowers, beautiful and peaceful, where all of the inhabitants are poets. It sounds too good to be true – just like Ferdinand Raimund’s play Die gefesselte Phantasie, which premiered at the Theater in der Leopoldstadt in 1828. After two sisters, evil witches, come to disturb the peace, an oracle tells the queen that she has to marry someone worthy of her if she wants to banish the troublemakers. The queen, however, a strong-minded woman, has sworn that she would only ever marry a poet. Her attempt of settling the conflict peacefully ends with the two wicked sisters ravaging the island and all of the courtiers fleeing cowardly. The queen then announces that she will marry the person that writes her the most beautiful poem. The witches, however, thwart her plan by imprisoning the imagination so that nobody will ever write a poem again. From this point on, the grotesque and fantastical play takes its bizarre course.
Guest appearance: Burgtheater Wien
